PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
Sixty-five Tory MPs signed a motion criticising a plan by Michael Portillo, the Defence Secretary, to sell off 60,000 army homes. Mr Portillo was also attacked by his mentor, Lady Thatcher, for not attending a service commemorating the 80th anniver- sary of the Battle of the Somme. The Labour Party announced that its plan to set up regional assemblies in Scotland and Wales would be subject to approval in a referendum; the Party's spokesman on con- stitutional affairs promptly resigned. Later, the leadership style of Tony Blair was pub- licly denounced by backbench Labour MP Mr Paul Flynn. Mr Blair, a member of the Church of England, agreed to stop taking Catholic Holy Communion after the church ruled that he was breaking canon law. A police detective was jailed for 11 years after accepting an £80,000 bribe. A cancer patient who three years ago was told he had three months to live was awarded legal aid to sue his doctors for the 'emotional toll' it had taken on him. Meanwhile, the Govern- ment announced plans to cut the legal aid budget. The British Medical Association voted not to allow doctors to engage in sex- ual acts with their patients. Underground train drivers and postmen went on strike. Historians revealed that the remains of Henry VIII's pleasure palace lie beneath No. 10 Downing Street. A number of aged men who had been pop stars in the 1960s gathered to give a pop concert in Hyde Park. After nine years of deliberations, district councillors approved a plan to build a holi- day centre for East End children in Turville, a Buckinghamshire village. Several tennis players were rumoured to have spent £188,000 on the redundant feudal title 'Lard of Wimbledon'. A British tennis player, Tim Henman, reached the quarter-finals at Wim- bledon for the first time in 23 years. Several hundred football fans started smashing win- dows after England were defeated by Ger- many in a penalty shoot-out in the semi-final of a competition called Euro 96. Germany went on to win the competition. Alfred Marks, the actor, died aged 75.
RADOVAN ICARADZIC, the leader of the Bosnian Serbs, wanted on charges of war crimes, was said to have handed over his powers to a deputy called Biljana Plasvic, described as 'hard-line'. A bomb at an American air base in Saudi Arabia killed 19 servicemen. The IRA fired three mortar bombs at a British army base in Germany. President Yeltsin was said to be suffering from a cold as he cancelled meetings days before the second round of the Russian presidential election. A retired FBI agent published a book containing details of the alleged affairs of President Clinton; the President's men dismissed the allegations as a right-wing plot. Voters in Turkey elect-
ed an Islamic government after 73 years of secular politics. The nanny of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was sacked, either for unstable behaviour or for burning the soup, depending on whom you believe. The northern Indian state of Haryana acti- vated a policy of prohibition; liquor sellers in neighbouring states were said to be building up their stocks. A Jehovah's Wit- ness was arrested in Singapore for possess- ing the sect's version of the Bible. A cere- monial bullet fired in the air during a cattle show in Pakistan brought down a power line, killing 15 people. Nuclear physicists searching for an obscure subatomic particle at the Cern laboratory in Geneva found their efforts were being thwarted by two bottles of Heineken beer jammed into their particle accelerator. Veronica Guerin, a journalist who spent her career investigat- ing the Irish underworld, was murdered in Dublin. The Duke and Duchess of Saxony shot themselves dead in an apparent sui- cide pact. Lyle and Erik Menendez, two Californian brothers who murdered their parents in 1989, were finally jailed for life after seven years of trials and appeals. Mar- got Hemingway, granddaughter of Ernest Hemingway, was found dead on the eve of the 35th anniversary of the novelist's death. Albert 'Cubby' Broccoli, producer of the James Bond films, died aged 87.
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